Women in Information. Communication Technologies

Olca Surgevil

Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey
Mustafa F. Ozbilgin

Brunei University, UK & Universite Paris-Dauphine, France

INTRODUCTION

Individual participation in the information econ­omy is affected by a large number of variables such as education, skill, income, race / ethnicity, language, gender and disability (OECD, 1999). Some of these variables such as education and skill are considered legitimate in most countries, while other variables based on arbitrary criteria such as gender, race and disability are viewed as illegitimate in a growing number of countries. Employment in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sectors around the world has

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60960-759-3.ch006 also been affected by gender discrimination and stereotyping practices.

The concept of technology gained popularity in 1950s and it has traditionally been associated with men. Technology was usually assumed as to be men’s work and most definitions reinforce such a masculine ideology (Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2007). Most feminist historians and sociologists oftechnology have emphasized strong alignments between technology and masculinity especially in the area of engineering (Oudshoorn et al., 2004; Kusku et al., 2007).

The number of female workers has been gradu­ally increased in the field of ICT. However, the number of women users of ICT is not growing at a sufficient pace to allow women to influence the development of ICT. Thus, recruiting and retaining more women in ICT profession or making the ICT work environment more welcoming for women is still a significant challenge in industrialized societies (Faulkner&Lie, 2007).

In this study women’s attendance to ICT field and the qualifications (fundamental capabilities and training) which they need to get into the sector are discussed in the light of the pertinent litera­ture. Drawing on interdisciplinary insights, this chapter questions the implications of numerical feminization in the context of gendered cultures and processes of work in the information technol­ogy (IT) sector, and proposes some directions for future research.

Updated: 04.11.2015 — 20:40